Scripture descends to speak to us, using metaphor to reveal the holy. In Parashat Eikev, we find references to the "mighty hand and the outstretched arm" by which God liberated the Israelites from Egypt (7:19). When the Torah uses the human body as a code to decipher God, we glimpse through ourselves the presence of the One in whose image we are created. Knowing that God is incorporeal, some find such physical descriptions of God inadequate and turn to the natural world. Thus we may imagine God as a rock (hatzur, as in 32:4), as dew (Hosea 14:6), or as a spring of living water (Jeremiah 17:1). Nevertheless, if we look closely at the corporeal imagery in parashat Eikev, we discover that its imagery hints at the luminous potentiality of our bodies to experience God.
The portion begins, "And if (eikev) you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your God Adonai will maintain faithfully for you the covenant" (7:12). Why is the term eikev (here translated as "if") used to introduce the conditional clause, instead of a word more commonly employed for that purpose (such as im or ki)? The unusual language that begins our parashah invites the early medieval commentator Rashi to engage in word play, linking eikev to the noun akeiv ("heel"). Rashi writes that if we heed even minor Commandments that are easy to trample over with our heels (in other words, commandments that we are likely to treat lightly), then God will keep the promises given to our ancestors. Read in this manner, the portion opens with a warning about not allowing thick skin to divert us from the path on which we walk toward God. Like Moses who takes off his sandals to experience holiness emanating from the earth, so we too are called to remove all barriers between God and ourselves.

The Male Womb and Circumcising the Hearts of Women

The next verse states, "[God] will favor you and bless you and multiply you--blessing your issue of the (literally: your) womb" (7:1). What is interesting here is that the Hebrew wording is all in the masculine singular. Are men imagined as having wombs, or more darkly, as owning women's wombs? Perhaps we can generously understand the verse as a suggestion that empathy can allow anyone to feel the blessing of a full womb. We know God first as the Creator, the womb of the world. The organ that nurtures potential life may be found in only half the population, yet the Torah suggests that both men and women celebrate pregnancy and birth.

If we accept this idea, then women can look at a later verse in our parashah that speaks in an unequivocally male metaphor and not feel excluded. Although our translation reads, "Cut away ... the thickening about your hearts" (10:16), a more literal translation of this verse is, "Circumcise ... the foreskin of your heart." In other words, remove that which obstructs your heart and keeps you from following God's teachings; open yourself up to experiencing "the great, the mighty, and the awesome God" (10:17). The foreskin in this expression can be likened to the thick skin on our feet that keeps us from feeling our connection to the Holy most intimately. Women and men alike can have a heart that is tender, loving, and open to the Divine, not just those who have literally been circumcised.

Ordained in 1998 from the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational seminary, Malka Drucker is also the founding rabbi of HaMakom: The Place for Passionate and Progressive Judaism, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.